North Coast Repertory Theatre Presents The Drawer Boy, Opening Tonight

North Coast Repertory Theatre Presents One of Time Magazine's Top 10 Plays- Behind the Plain Lives of Two Farmers, a Past That's Anything But... The Drawer Boy

By Michael Healey
Directed by David Ellenstein
February 26 - March 20, 2011
Previews: February 23 - 25, 2011
Tickets: $30 - $47

PRESS/OPENING NIGHT IS
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2011
RSVP Required. Please be advised, seating is limited.

Full of delightfully wry humor and mystery, drama and humanity, Michael Healey's The Drawer Boy, celebrates the true meaning of friendship and the transformative power of storytelling. The play created a phenomenon at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre and is one of the most successful plays in Canadian theatre history. In 2001 it made Time Magazine's top ten list as "a new classic."

Michael Healey (Playwright) trained as an actor at Toronto's Ryerson Theatre School in the mid-'80s. He began writing for the stage in the early '90s and his first play, a solo one-act called Kicked, was produced at the Fringe of Toronto Festival in 1996. He subsequently toured the play across Canada and internationally, and in 1998 it won a Dora Manor Moore Award as best new play. He and collaborator Kate Lynch wrote The Road to Hell, a pair of one-act comedies, which was produced at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto in the fall of 1999. The Drawer Boy is his first full-length play, and it has won the Dora Award for best new play (1999), a Chalmers Canadian Playwriting Award (2000), the Governor General's Literary Award (1999) and was selected by Time Magazine as one of the best plays of 2001. Mr. Healey is currently a writer-in-residence at the Tarragon Theatre, which produced his play Plan Bin January 2002.

David Ellenstein (Artistic Director) Nationally recognized director and actor; David served as Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Repertory Company and the Arizona Jewish Theatre before joining North Coast Rep in 2003. Over 200 career productions include directing 22 shows at North Coast Rep, including BECKY'S NEW CAR, GHOSTS, TALLEY'S FOLLY, THE DRESSER, OVER THE TAVERN, HALPERN & JOHNSON, THE CHOSEN, and ROMEO AND JULIET. Elsewhere; SONIA FLEW starring Lucie Arnaz, HALPERN AND JOHNSON starring Hal Linden and Brian Murray, and THE CHOSEN starring Theo Bikel and John Lloyd Young at the Coconut Grove Playhouse. Other venues include the Paper Mill Playhouse, Alabama, California, Nevada, Great Lakes, Southwest, and Kingsmen Shakespeare Festivals, Laguna Playhouse, Meadow Brook Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, Los Angeles Theatre Center, Portland Repertory Theatre, and Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company.

Frank Corrado* (Morgan) Frank is pleased to return to NCR where two seasons ago he appeared in J.T. Rogers' Madagascar directed by David Ellenstein. Mr. Corrado began his professional career in his native New York in the mid-seventies as a founding member of an experimental troupe affiliated with the late Ellen Stewart's legendary La Mama company. He moved to Seattle in the early eighties and has played leading roles at all the major theatres there and at many other well-known companies across the country, among them the Alliance in Atlanta, the Berkeley Rep, the Denver Center, the Getty Villa, the Long Wharf in New Haven, the McCarter in Princeton and the Soho Rep off-Broadway. Also a writer, he received the MFA degree from the Playwright's Workshop at the University of Iowa. He created and curates the popular Pinter Fortnightly series at Seattle's A Contemporary Theatre, in support of which he was awarded the 2010 Fox Fellowship for Distinguished Achievement from Theatre Communications Group. He wishes to dedicate his work here to the memory of his beloved friend and mentor Robert Ellenstein.

Paul Hopper* (Angus) A 35 year veteran of Actors Equity Association Paul's regional credits include Alabama Shakespeare Festival RICHARDIII (Lord Stanley), HENRY VI part A (Glouchester), HENRY VI part B (Lord Clifford), ROCKET CITY (Various), A CHRISTMAS CAROL, THE MUSICAL (Fezziwig), ALLS WELL... (Lafew), HAMLET (Ghost and Grave Digger), LETTICE AND LOVEAGE (Surly Man) and others. At Meadow Brook Theatre he was seen in the roles of Van Helsing in DRACULA, A ROCK OPERA, Jeeves in BY JEEVES, Boolie in DRIVING MISS DAISY, Candy in OF MICE AND MEN, Thurston, Bertha, Pearl, et al in GREATER TUNA, Chet in OVER THE TAVERN, Geigory in DIARY OF A SCOUNDRAL, Froggy in THE FOREIGNER, and about 50 more. At the Purple Rose Theatre Company he has created many leading and supporting roles, including the World Premiers of ESCANABA IN LOVE by, Jeff Daniels, ...AND THE WINNER IS, by Mitch Albom, and RAIN DANCE by, Lanford Wilson. This marks his first occasion to grace our stage at North Coast Rep and he wanted to thank David and all the good people here for the opportunity. Also, many thanks to Barbara (his wife) without which, he say's, he could not continue to breathe.

Kevin Koppman-Gue
(Miles) Kevin Koppman-Gue is excited to return to North Coast Repertory Theatre. CREDITS: Deathtrap (Scripps Ranch Theatre), Becky's New Car (North Coast Rep), Speech and Debate, Moscow (Diversionary Theatre), Into the Woods (SDSU Theatre), Romeo, Romeo & Juliet (Vox Nova Theatre Company), The History Boys (Cygnet Theatre), How I Learned to Drive, Everything Will Be Different (Lynx Performance) and The Winslow Boy (Lamb's Players Theatre). STAGED READINGS: Relatively Speaking, Time of My Life (Cygnet Theatre), Rebels (Old Globe), Spring's Awakening (AASD). Kevin has also performed with ion theatre company, 6th @ Penn, Fritz Theatre, Starlight Musical Theatre, Sledgehammer.
NEXT: Drawer Boy, King O' the Moon (NCR).

Tony Matarrese (Morgan/Angus Understudy) Tony is a native of Chicago, and has had a love affair with theatre and acting since high school. After a stint in the U.S. Army, Tony received his B.F.A. in acting and directing from Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri. Upon graduation, he returned to Chicago, and performed at several local theatres. Some of his first roles included Nathan Detroit from "Guys and Dolls", James from "The Miracle Worker", and Glas from "Slow Dance on the Killing Ground". On his way out to the west coast, Tony appeared at the Steamboat Springs Summer Theatre, performing the role of Curly from "Of Mice and Men". Tony spent some time in Los Angeles, grabbing some minor roles on television, before moving down to San Diego. In between the TV work, Tony got a chance to perform his favorite role to date, as Stanley Kowalski from "A Streetcar Named Desire", which he performed in Santa Monica, Ca. Tony is very glad to have an opportunity to work with David Ellenstein, and appreciates the opportunity to understudy the roles of Angus and Morgan.

The Farm SHOW
In the summer of 1972, a group of young actors from Toronto descended on The Farming community of Clinton, Ontario, and created there one of the landmarks of Canadian theatre history-The Farm Show. Guided by director Paul Thompson, co-founder of Theatre Passe Muraille, the actors moved in with local families, interviewed farmers and built a collective creation out of what they saw and heard. Most of the dialogue came directly from The Farmers, to whom the play is dedicated and before whom it was first performed. For years following that first production in Ray Bird's barn, no written text of The Farm Show existed until the scenes were finally committed to paper by company member Ted Johns, who sums up the experience in his Introduction: "Usually a script is the first hint of a play's existence. In this case, it is the last. In the early days of that summer of '72, the actors had no idea what they were doing. The dramatic techniques, and the songs, grew out of the actors' attempts to dramatize their discoveries in daily improvisational sessions. At first the result didn't seem like a play-no lights, no costumes, no set, a barn for a theatre, hay bales for seats. Simply pure performance. First in those incredible performances in Clinton, and then again in Toronto, in Saskatchewan, in Southern Ontario auction barns, in the palatial art centers of Ottawa, Stratford, and Manitoba, Michael Ondaatje's successful film, a CBC television special, several radio versions, and finally crowds of strangers asking, 'How did you do this?' No one anticipated the delight people would take in hearing their own language and observing their own culture. The people were discovering themselves."

Original company of The Farm Show, including Paul Thompson (left), co-founder of
Theatre Passe Muraille; David Fox (second from left), who created the part of Angus in
The Drawer Boy at Passe Muraille; and Miles Potter (center), director of that first production
and Michael Healey's inspiration for the character of Miles.

A DRAWER BOY GLOSSARY
Donnellys - Canada's most notorious family, five members of who were brutally massacred in 1880 by a vigilante committee near London, Ontario.

Ensilage - the process of preserving fodder (such as cornstalks, rye, oats, millet, etc.) by compressing it while green and fresh in a pit or vat called a silo, where it is kept covered from the air.

Freshie - the Canadian equivalent of kool-aid.

Mow (rhymes with "cow") - a stack of hay or other feed stored in a barn; also the place in a barn where hay, grain or other feed is stored.

Low (rhymes with "show") - the characteristic sound made by cattle.

Prince's Patricians ("Pats") - the World War II military unit from south central Ontario.

Rochdale College- the center of radical left-wing activity on the campus of
the University of Toronto in the '60s and '70s. The company that developed The Farm Show was based at Rochdale College before they got their own building and became the Theatre Passe Muraille.

Shinney - ice, street or field hockey played informally with a ball, can or similar object.

THE STOLEN POEM
The poem Angus recites in Act III is "At the Wedding March" by Gerard
Manley Hopkins (1879).

GOD with honour hang your head,
Groom, and grace you, bride, your bed
With lissome scions, sweet scions,
Out of hallowed bodies bred.
Each be other's comfort kind:
Déep, déeper than divined,
Divine charity, dear charity,
Fast you ever, fast bind.
Then let the March tread our ears:
I to him turn with tears
Who to wedlock, his wonder wedlock,
Déals tríumph and immortal years.

Note: "The Wedding March," which is actually incidental music from Felix Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream, was first played as a recessional at
the wedding of the English Princess Royal in 1858.

SPOTLIGHT CAFÉ ART PROVIDED BY:
The San Diego Brain Injury Foundation

San Diego Brain Injury Foundation
The San Diego Brain Injury Foundation has been serving individuals with brain injuries and their families since 1983. Under the direction of Susan Hansen, Chief Operating Officer and Stephanie Bidegain, Special Event Coordinator, along with a very active Board of Directors that "clocks in" close to 1000 volunteer hours each year, The Brain Injury Foundation is one of the most important resources for survivors and their families living in San Diego County.

The mission of the Foundation is to improve the quality of life for brain injury survivors and their families. Services include Howard House, a residential care facility in Escondido for survivors who need 24 hour care; a help-line that offers information and referrals to survivors, family and professionals; a quarterly newsletter that goes out to nearly 4000 recipients; outreach to local hospitals to staff and families of newly diagnosed individuals with brain injury; three free monthly support groups for survivors and family members meeting in North County at Scripps Hospital, Encinitas, the Joyce Beers Center in Hillcrest, and a newly formed Spanish speaking group in South Bay.
Recently, the Foundation has focused on reaching out to the military coming home with a TBI.

The Foundation has over 50 volunteers that help out with mailings, fundraising events, and health fairs and support groups. Visit our website at www.sdbif.org.

 

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